“There's an expression in Germany – ‘every day another soul is chased to the street’.

“When I was on holidays, Eileen Downey went to the hotel and fired two people, just told them your job is not required any more, no explanation.”

But he conceded that Britannia did some things well.

“The accounting is actually very sophisticated, I learnt things. But from the operations side – you can forget it. What they offer and what they do is 70s and 80s. They have never come forward to the 90s or the new century.

“The Adelphi can do very, very good things, no doubt about it, but not on a daily basis. I like old buildings, they have character and atmosphere – I like the Adelphi very much.”

But he claimed that Britannia’s head office placed unworkable restrictions on staff numbers and hours.

The ECHO has put all Mr Beneta’s allegations to Britannia but Ms Downey said she did not wish to respond as “you do not print what we actually say.”

Mr Beneta, who has 35 years’ experience working in hotels, claimed: “One of the main problems is Britannia hotels doesn't allow you enough cleaning hours. All the time they cut hours. When you start you get your ratios, on a piece of paper.”

He claimed that Britannia enforced a ratio of one chef for 250 people for breakfast, which was “absolutely not sufficient”.

He also said maids were set too short times to clean rooms, and housekeepers were told not to check the cleaning work if guests were staying the next night – even though it is normally checked as “standard” in other hotels.

Mr Beneta said: “You have a lot of committed people in there, but they have been let down by the company. There is not enough maintenance, not enough repairs.”

He said some maintenance work had been done, but in his view was of a poor standard and had been poorly planned.

Mr Beneta said: “Britannia hotels are an accountants’ company, everything is decided in head office. The general manager and the staff are there for scapegoating if something goes wrong.”

He claimed they had tried to make him a scapegoat for the hotel’s zero-star food hygiene rating, after the ECHO’s report.

He said he would normally always leave a company on good terms and not air dirty laundry: “I would never, ever say anything about a company if they had not betrayed my trust.”

He said: “I want clarification from the Adelphi, from Eileen Downey. I will not let them trample over me without giving them a fight.”

He admitted that it was “embarrassing” to read the findings of Food Hygiene inspectors on November 24, who recorded that the premises were not kept clean and mouse droppings were found in a kitchen and restaurant.

He claimed Britannia hotels employed a separate pest control firm who gave him regular updates and had told him things were clean.

He added that a dead mouse found by inspectors the following day, November 25, was in a mouse trap. Inspectors also reported “evidence of cockroaches” and said they found one of the insects in the kitchen.

But Mr Beneta said: “The cockroach thing is wrong.”

He said that in the entire hotel the inspectors had found only one “mini, baby cockroach” found on a sticky tape used to catch them. And he said two members of staff whose responsibility it was to keep the kitchens clean had been disciplined.

For the future, he said: “They have to invest in the hotel, because at the moment the Adelphi is going down to a pure coach hotel.”